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Jeremias Gotthelf is the pen name of Albert Bitzius—a Swiss pastor and author of novels, novellas, short stories, and nonfiction. He often used his writing to communicate his reformist concerns in with education and the plight of the poor. The author took his name from the name of the protagonist of his first novel: Der Bauernspiegel oder Lebensgeschichte des Jeremias Gotthelf: Von ihm selbst beschrieben (The Peasants' Mirror; or, The Life History of Jeremias Gotthelf: Described by Himself).
Plaque on the house where Jeremias Gotthelf was born.
Albert Bitzius was born October 4, 1797 in Morat, Switzerland. He was the son of a pastor, Sigmund Bitzius, and his wife Elisabeth. Shortly after his birth, Switzerland experienced the Helvetic Revolution, when the reign of patrician elites in the cities came to an end and French troops were called in by revolutionaries to help the revolutionaries fight Bernese authorities. He studied theology at the theological college in Bern, studied at the University of Göttingen, and took part in political activities that ended the rule of the aristocracy in Bern.
In 1832, Bitzius became the pastor of Lützelflüh, following being a vicar in Bern since 1829. During his time as a pastor of Lützelflüh, Bitzius made efforts to enlighten the local people and tried to bring about universal education, which included founding an institution for the neglected.
Throughout his life, Gotthelf maintained an interest in politics, with his time as a young man often spent writing political topics for the newspapers. This included advocating for equal rights for the rural population and attacking what he saw as an arrogance of urban intellectuals. He was, during this time, closely allied with leading liberal politicians in Bern, who were known to have used his apartment as a meeting place during the year Gotthelf spent in Bern as a vicar. And in 1830, Gotthelf supported their efforts to overthrow the dominant Bernese patriciate and liberalize the city's constitution, which proved successful.
In the following decades, Swiss liberals, considered to be under the influence of the French Revolution, became increasingly radicalized and embraced greater state centralization along with socialism or communism. The liberals also grew more secular, which led to Gotthelf turning on them. His later writing was filled with political criticism, with friends warning him that he should reduce his political commentary or else he could endanger his position as pastor.
The Gotthelf Center in Lützelflüh.
By the end of his life, many contemporaries came to regard Gotthelf, much like Burke in England, as having changed from liberal to reactionary. However, when critically examined, Gotthelf was more consistent in his convictions than critics often gave him credit for. He held firm to his Christian social principles, despite the world around him changing rapidly, and this formed the core of his political vision that included faith, family, and the dignity of honest labor. In this, Gotthelf believed the task of government was to enable virtuous families to form virtuous citizens.
Often Jeremias Gotthelf's purpose in his writing was didactic; however, he showed exceptional literary talent. He wrote twelve novels and more than fifty short stories that revealed his talent as a writer and offered some poetic talents as well as his intense interest in people. This included psychological observations, imagination, and a creative power with language which allowed the author to achieve the portraits of life in rural Switzerland and related issues.
His first novel was published when he was forty year old, and from this early work it suggested Gotthelf intended to push back against romanticized literature of the time. Instead, he worked to capture the life of the rural Emmental villages and farms and included the harsh realities of life for those residents, even writing in the local dialect to further flavor the writing.
Gotthelf's first novel, Der Bauernspiegel oder Lebensgeschichte des Jeremias Gotthelf: Von ihm selbst beschrieben (The Peasants' Mirror; or, The Life History of Jeremias Gotthelf: Described by Himself) was published in 1837, which was followed by more novels dealing with rural people, including Leiden und Freuden eines Schulmeisters, 2 vol. (The Joys and Sorrows of a School-master) published from 1839 to 1838, Die Armennot (Needs of the Poor) published in 1840, and Uli der Knecht (Ulric the Farm Servant) published in 1841.
Visualization of the titular black spider.
The novels dealt with themes such as the practice of using orphans or children removed from their homes auctioned out by the government who would accept the lowest fee for their care, and would often exploit the children brutally. Or dramatized the need for educational reform and the growing problems of rural alcoholism and growing problems in the proletariat.
Gotthelf's best known work is his short novel Die schwarze Spinne (The Black Spider), which is a semi-allegorical tale of the plague in the form of a black spider that devastates a Swiss valley community. He followed his novels with several volumes of shorter tales. His works were collected in twenty-four volumes at Berlin, between 1856 and 1861, while ten volumes with the original text of each were collected at Bern between 1898 and 1900.
